The Team House - SPECIAL FORCES COMMAND SERGEANT MAJOR | Mike Adams | Ep. 277

Episode Date: May 12, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseMike spent over 30 years in Special Forces.To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#specialforces #greenberetsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special Operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy, and David Park. All right. So for this episode, I'm here today with retired Sergeant Major Michael Adams. Mike served in fifth group, first group, seventh group. Any other group? Not seven. Not seven. first, fifth, third, tenth, IMA softback. Yeah, sorry about that. So they kept you super busy, Mike. And thank you for doing this interview today. And, you know, we've known each other for years.

And, you know, it's fun to, you know, do this with you and discuss your career in some length and depth. Yeah, Jack, I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. It means a lot. Thanks. Yeah, absolutely. So let's start at the beginning, man. Tell us a little bit about sort of like what your upbringing was like and how that led you towards the Army.

Yeah, sure. So my upbringing was very outdoors, hunting, fishing. Also, my father went as far as to take me backpacking a little bit of a limited amount of food and made me live off the land. And back in the day, he taught me how to navigate with a map and a compass. He gave me all kinds of skills that he all put into, you know, become a special force of soldier. It started as my backstory. What happened was I went to college very young.

Literally the first day I was walking up this hill to register for classes. I had to cross a bridge. And there were two special forces guys repelling off the bridge with a couple students, right? Yeah. It turned out to be Joe J. Denison, who was the first sergeant major of the regiment, and Ken Landzalako, who was also a Magpie Sond guy. So I managed to stay in college for two years, but the whole time in the back of my mind,

I'm like, I don't want to fucking do this shit. So one time I got Joe to go down to the recruiter with me, and the only thing they would offer me was Ranger Regiment. I'm like, no, I want to be in special forces because by then I knew what special forces was. I mean, I knew the difference, but they weren't accepting people off the street. So a year later, I went back to the recruiter, and they were accepting people off the street. I think it's similar to they have a program now, call it something. I don't know what it's called.

Yeah, that's right program. Is that what it is? Yeah. And what year was this, Mike, that you went and signed up? In 1977, what's the year I signed up, late 77. And so I went to, you know, basic infantry jump back up to brag. We had what was called pre-phase back then,

which was just a lot of, you know, beating the shit out of the rucksack marches and running and stuff like that. It wasn't like that whole organized thing that they have now. We did stuff, kind of like that. But it was more of, you know, rubsack marches and running than it was these organized team skills that they do now, which I think are great. They're wonderful.

But the way it ended up was in phase one, I think a lot more people got weeded out than they probably did now. I don't know what the percentage was, but I can tell you to fuck out. Oh, Mike, we lost your audio. Yeah. I lost your audio there for a second. Word to lose me.

Okay, you're back. You're talking about how a lot of people probably washed out in phase one during the class. And so I support the idea of having a structured pre-phase where they actually, you know, weed them out there instead of wasting a bunch of time and money and put them in phase one, you know, right away. I was also very fortunate in phase one. And in all the beginning of my career, pretty much almost every damn guy had either been in Zog or he at least had been on an eight-team in Vietnam, everybody but me. And so, of course, they hated me for what I had. represented they did not like guys come in and off the street at all

they didn't care for us but they came to accept us you know for example the first time I went down to my first company to start major maybe go out and fucking rankleys before I could even in process I mean

I mean it's it's incredible and I mean I didn't know that Joe Denison was actually actually like kind of recruited you into SF he totally did 100% 100% We were friends by the legend in his own right. Absolutely, dude. He's a warrior and a hero altogether.

He did so much for the regiment. It was unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. He was a real, real good man, real good man. And I ran across a lot of really good men back then. I mean, I think everybody from the group commander down to the teams, every single guy was a bet from Vietnam, right? So they had all this experience.

And once they got over being pissed at us, they gave it to us. You know, they passed it on that to us. And that was a unique position to be in, you know, because these guys had done the gamut omissions. They didn't just do DA or whatever, or they didn't just do fence hopping, which is cool. And really, I'm really, I think that's very impressive. But they also had eight camps out that are in the woods. And, you know, they had singletons. you know, guys out there for a year out in the mountains of Vietnam and other areas.

So they did the whole whole gamut of missions of Special Forces missions, I think, while they were over there, they'd UW everything, you know. That was a generation of guys who knew how to patrol and like really knew their really new field craft. Dude, let me tell you something. I can't tell you how many hours we spent working on our LBE to get it. perfect. I mean, if they heard one little tiny noisier and fucked, you know. But they taught us. They didn't say, you know,

unfuck your LB. They taught us how to do it. You know, they taught us out of patrol. Yes, they were they were the guys that could patrol from hell. And I learned a really, really ton of stuff about patrolling from those guys. Really ton of stuff. What was the, uh, your first ODA after you graduated first group? Where were you? So what happened first was they sent me to the fucking combo shack to fucking great guys tapping out of code. I'm like, fuck this shit.

And then they sent me up to, they sent me to the instructor's course that had to pass up there. I don't know what it was called. And the guy liked me up there. So he talked to the commo committee. They kept me up there. And then they man. There was another master shardin up there. was a combat diure from ODA8-543 in Fifth Group.

And he was just doing his last tour. And so he got me hooked up to go back down to ODA8-543. Now it's my first team in Fifth Group. And it was a fantastic team. We had so many good people, good teams, Sarantz. Martin Millie was one of my team leaders from 81 to 83. He was a real good man. I know people talk a little shir about him now.

No, you're wrong. He's the good man. He calls me to this day. to check on me because I got those stage four cancer, which I'd like to talk about later. Yeah, yeah. And Martin Millie went straight to the top. I mean, he's chairman of the joint sheets, right? Yep, yep, yeah.

Well, he just retired a couple months ago, but yeah, he went all the way up. And he was a real good man. And my team starting at the time, some guys don't know him. His name was Massachusetts Sergeant Henry Beck. He ended up getting the DSE for charging the machine gun nest in being on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these are the kind of guys I was around, you know, they were just amazing guys. My senior combo guy, I don't know, somehow he went to Fort Lewis.

I mean, Fort Leavenworth after Vietnam, but came back. I don't know the whole story beyond that, but lots of guys with lots of stories. And I mean, it was also at such a different time, I mean, up on Smokebomb Hill and the G.B. club and SF was so small back then like everyone my impression is everyone knew each other. We all knew each other, Jack, and it was so much smaller. You couldn't put together three A teams in my company on a good day, you know? Because you were under. There were enough people. Yeah. And then I want to say, I can't swear this, but I want to say they took the Tone down to two companies for battalion for a while. Wow. That didn't last. I think. I can't

were on. But then gradually it started coming back and then they opened up a battalion out at Lewis and reactivated first week and then things slowly started going but then. Yeah, it was time. It was time. Smoke bomb hell. Everybody knew each other. When you were in training, you were allowed to have two beers at the Green Brewery Club where the stripper was and a shitty hamburger, you know? And the ugly stripper. But yeah, that was the atmosphere. But I'll tell you, when it came down to missions and stuff, hard as 10 motherfuckers, hard as fucking nails. Everybody got immediately serious, immediately hard as nails.

Did not fuck around. Nobody fuck around. Could you tell us a little bit about your first ODA, like any real world missions you may have gotten or even training missions that stand out in your mind? Oh, what stand? Oh, God, there's so many. I hate to talk about my first team because some of the stuff I could say, I really don't want to say. I mean, we let's do a lot of stuff. We went to Europe, we went to Africa.

We got to do a lot of stuff. It was fun. Some was training. Sometimes it was like there was like a gray area between training in real world if you understand what I'm saying. You know, like you drop a couple of guys. a few guys off of the mill of nowhere on a runway in Sudan, this happened to me. And, you know, you kind of have a mission, you kind of don't, you know. But there you are.

The Chinese are controlling the airfield. There's Migs all around you. And you got a little tent and a couple of indage hanging around there. And you're like, when the fuck are we supposed to be doing there? So we just fucked around a lot, you know. It was fun. It was really fun. We had the best times back then because they're just, as long as you did your job,

you could really get away with a ton of shit. And it didn't have to be a little. It was fun. You know, and it was all such a learning experience. It really was. We were very fortunate to have such a good learning experience, you know. It was just totally awesome.

And what came after that first ODA then? What was the next one you landed at? Well, I think, oh, let's see. I came, I went on to my first CPAC project, I think, after that. What's SPACAP? I guess a COBRA project or something. I don't know. Very classified.

That's all I can explain it. I don't know what it means. Special category, I think, is what it's against. I don't know what it means. What was the gist of that? Long hairs and civilian clothes and go receipts, you know. And it was a blast. We had a great time, but we had a mission.

As long as we did the mission, as long as we, you know, kept our shit together, we were good to go. And we could get away with doing, you know, this or that, whatever good. This was the RST mission? No, I don't think so. I don't know what that stands. I think it was regional survey. teams and like 3-7 had one.

They were like one of the early ones. But when you say like long hair doing intelligence workplaces, it sounds similar to that early. Like what we're talking about is. I don't remember that. I don't remember those. I remember these a long time. I don't remember those abbreviations. But we had like two ODAs combined together.

And as a matter of fact, I'm still in touch with a couple guys from there. Really good guys. Clyde Doherty and Gordy Hopple on I've been in touch with those guys recently. Unfortunately, again, it comes back to this cancer shit that's going on. I'm sorry.

But yeah, yeah. You know, one time we went to Jordan and we thought somebody, we did all this cool shit. We thought somebody was falling us around or something. And I ended up buying a plane ticket

to go back home. And back then you use cash, you know, to buy plane tickets. You went to travel agencies. And I get on this fucking fight, man. And just like maybe a couple hours after it started going. And I don't think anybody else was with me. I don't remember anybody else being with me on that trip. All of a sudden, I hear we're descending into Damascus.

I'm like, what? Back then, we were not friends with Syria. They were not buddies of ours. And I was like, what the fuck? So the travel lady had given me a flight that stopped in Damascus on the way to New York City. I couldn't believe it. I was scared to us. They made us get off the plane and made us sit in the lounge area.

And some dudes of plane clothes were going around looking at passports. And despite my obvious white boy look, they did not come over to me. I don't know why this day. Were you traveling on a U.S. government passport? Yeah. Yeah, so you're not going to hide that. No. And we had a really stupid lame cover story.

Did you do a lot of missions like that around that time going by yourself or onesies and twosies? I did do a ton of onesies, Jack, in my career, especially in the Pacific. That's why, as I told you, I think before the started, I sat down and went down. I deployed to over 30 countries in my career, several of them multiple times. In the Pacific in particular, I helped start up the demining program in Laos. I helped start up the demining program in Cambodia before it turned on the first group. And then I did a shitload of onesies to some really fucking interesting places. Some of them not so cool.

Like Cambodia was not cool. The Khmer Roos were still there. We were out in the middle of those. with a bunch of Cambodians, just me and a bunch of Cambodians. And, you know, there was gunfights going on somewhere around this, but whatever. And then, what was the other one I was in? Sri Lanka, there was a war going on there, bombings. I was there by myself.

I'm trying to think of other places in the Pacific. I came to think of one. Well, I mean, well, let's jump right into, I mean, what, what were you doing? doing in Cambodia. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify.

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Cambodia was the demining program. So it was really interesting. And especially Laos, I'll probably confuse some of what happened within one country and the other because they happened simultaneously. But one time I can remember coming out of the embassy with their helicopter going on a survey mission up in the mountains. And we weren't sitting close. But we got off the helicopter and some really old dude came up to us and said in English. She said, I've not seen a soldier since Vietnam. I was like, damn.

So those dudes who were up there, our precursor guys, were up in the middle of nowhere in Laosur, Cambodia, you know, and this dude remember him. And this is in the 1980s, I take it? Yeah, yeah, the 90s, maybe. I think it was in 90s. Early 90s. And then another time, a late walked up to us holding a U.S.

and handed it to me. I was like, okay, yeah. So I just walked real slow to the edge of the bill and put it down and marked it and left us. Fuck, man. But the problem was, dude, we left some insane amount of UXO in Laos and Cambodia. We carpet bombed those fucking countries.

And that's when the CBU first came out. And they throw these springs out. and shit. And if you touch them or move them or if the kids picked them up, they'd go off. They had a huge dud rate, like 30% or maybe worse, a dud rate of those things. But they would still go off oftentimes when you picked them up. I could relate to it because I could remember one morning in Desert Storm waking up after a movement at night being in the middle of a field of UXOCBUs. Same thing. You know, they were still dropping them. So it's all over the place.

They're in the Gulf War. And then what about Sri Lanka? I mean, with the Tamil Tigers, there was a pretty hot war going on there, you know, into the 90s. That's right. So in Sri Lanka, yeah. So when we got, when I got to those countries, I was supposed to, the first thing I was supposed to do was link up with the defense attach. And some, at most every country. had a defense attesche.

Some didn't, but most of them were fairly involved. I can remember the Syrian-Lonka in Atteche. He introduced me to the, he brought the Sri Lankan Army guy in. He introduced me, and then he wouldn't leave the embassy. I had to fly out into the field with this guy way up north. There's a peninsula up there, an island where the war was going on. With the tigers, it was isolated, his island was cut off. And I had to fly all the way up there with this dude in a Soviet, what, am I 17 or something,

something that feels like it's going to break down every second, you know, and there was an active war and golden box. You know, and there are all I hope things go well, right? Was your mission like reconnaissance at that point? Yeah, reconnaissance to try to understand what value added train we could bring to them to help them beat the meals. that was we were figuring out. But that's fascinating because it dovetails with what others have told me that around like, I guess 94 or so, there was a classified MTT or, you know, foreign internal defense mission to Sri Lanka and the first group did.

Well, I hope that was a result of what I found out. I don't know about it. But I hope I helped them. What were your conclusions from your time there? They needed help from the ground up. All their silt was worn out and beat up. They need a lot of the, money for weapons and stuff,

but they also needed training, our country, that we could give. And so I imagine that's probably what the first guys did was training them, train them up. Because they basically didn't really have any train. I don't know who originally trained the Syriarchs. It must have been the Russians

because they had Russian equipment. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. But they were very happy to see a meme and hoping that more would come. So I'm glad to hear something else came. Yeah, yeah. they did send ODAs and seals to do that. Yeah, not too many people know about that mission to this day.

Yeah, well, I'm glad they did because the Tamil's not only were they, and dude, it was like World War II trench fighting. I was like walking through these trenches. Fuck this shit, man. But in addition to that, they were doing suicide bombings in the town. And that was fucked up. As a matter of fact, they blew up the hotel. I usually stayed in him.

But fortunately, that wasn't. there at the time. But yeah, they had a lot of suicide bombers there. I think if memory serves, I think that Tamil Tigers may have been the first to use female suicide bombers. I think so too. Yeah, I may need to fact check that, but I think that's that was the case. Yeah, that was before we were seeing suicide bombers in the Middle East. They were on they were the leaders in that suicide bombing bullshit as far as I know. So I know we're jumping around a little bit, but I mean, so you start off in fifth group, and then where did you end up after that?

Well, so I was on the side. The classified operation, but then, I mean, what was kind of the next landing spot for you? I went to first. After that. I was going to tell you something that will get me in trouble. Don't tell me the thing. Tell me the thing that's going to get you. you in trouble.

Never mind. So after it was over, a few of us got the opportunity to pick where they wanted to go. And I've been in fifth group, I think, like 12 years or something by then. So I was like, let me go check out first food.

So, yeah, they sent me out the first group. When I got to go out there and check out the Pacific, I did a couple of deployments, you know, just where I go to a couple goals and that, bullshit over to Thailand and a couple of the places.

I can't remember where they were, but it wasn't much. It was just, it was good stuff, though. I mean, your regular stuff, it's all good. This is what a lot of these guys from GWAT are going to need to relearn, I think, is that you may not like Pitt, you may not think it's cool

or sexy. You may not think EW is cool or sexy, let me tell you something that's our core mission this that's a mission of special forces and we're the ones that are supposed to be the expert that and if we don't watch out people are going to take that away from us too i already saw before i even left i already saw the keg started to take it you know and you know and that's not cool that's our mission not the kegs fucking mission yeah whenever they get bored they kind of snatch whatever fid mission they think is the sexiest and do that.

But now there's also the S-Fab, right, that does, and that was Mark Millie's brainchild. Yeah, I know. But at the time, you needed it. You know, the war was on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, just because I like Millie doesn't mean I agree with that. I got mixed. You know, you're right. But I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're directionally right. And just to point that out to listeners that with two wars going on, there was so much fit to be done that they needed the conventional force to come in and help out with that. And even before the SFFAB existed, I mean, it was just like a mission that would get thrown to like a field artillery unit or an MP unit like, oh, go train these Iraqis.

They didn't have, they weren't receiving the Americans weren't receiving any sort of like foreign internal defense training. So I mean, it made sense to formalize it, I guess. I mean, I was trying to speak to both sides of that argument before I. Yeah. And I really think we need as Special Forces soldiers to embrace the Fid mission and show that we're the best and not let these guys take it away from us. They're not supposed to be the best at what they do. We're not supposed to be the best at what they do. We're supposed to be able to do it proficiently.

But we're not supposed to be. We are supposed to be the best of Fid. So prove it. And they won't be given the mission to somebody else, right? And they're fun, good missions. They really can be. It's all what you make go. right and can have a huge impact as long as you find a viable partner well yeah and what you

talked about about sierra lanka proves it right there right well passing on to people it has a good effect uh that's what we're supposed to do around the world uh so first group i mean it sounds like you're having a pretty good time over there i mean are there are other any other missions or any other ops or anything else that like really stands out that you think we should highlight here Well, yeah, that's why I went on sock pack, you know, because I knew there was a lot going on out there. Let me grab my phone. Sorry. I wrote down some of these countries and it'll draw my memory.

Sorry. Did I get all tilted? No, I got you. Just give me one second, John. So, oh, here's a good example. That was even earlier was urgent fury. So after urgent fury was over, we got to, fifth group teams got to go down there and other, I think some guys too, got to go down there and do five missions afterwards. I didn't know that at all.

Oh, yeah, totally. So almost every major island in that chain down there had a special forces team or two teams on the island for like six months or maybe longer. I don't know. And we would train, in my example, we took two scuba teams from fifth group down to an island called St. Kitts, and they only had a police force. They did not have a military. So we were given the weapons and equipment to re-equip them and train them to become a military force to protect their island if the same thing happened on St. Kitts that happened in Grenada, because St. Kitts, I think, is a military force to protect their island if the same thing happened on St. It's, I think, is a military force to protect their island if the same thing. It's, I think, it's even geographically close to the United States than Grenada was. And they really could not put up a defense against anybody if they came in there and tried to take over

and put nuclear weapons in there like they did in Grenada. Right? Earlier, it was a grenade wherever they put them. In Cuba. Yeah, yeah. And then there were fears that they would do that in Grenada. Exactly. There were fears they would do it in Grenada.

And they had a lot of people on the ground and kind of heavy weaponry, I believe. I'm on the ground there too. So yeah, that was really cool. That was a fun mission. Like once every week or two, a C-130 would make like two loops around the island,

so we would know he was there, and then we would drive over the runway. He would hot offload a bunch of shit, and we'd take it, and it would be filled with tons of stuff. Training gear, weapons, ammunition, beer. The first day we got there, we went to their arms room

and it was filled with Donja. Completely. You couldn't put any weapons in there because there were too much weed. I'm pretty positive that the government was involved in the drug smuggling in business.

I think that's a fair assumption. Yeah. It was pretty for me. That was very laid back. And, you know, maybe a little too, laid back sometimes. But it was a good,

it was a good example of a mission. It was the opposite I'd say of Surin-Lonk as far as being laid back. It was, if they're on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah, yeah. But that's a good example, you know,

of a mission that we did, you know, it came on. Here, let me look at my country list. Fiji, Tonga, those were all trained, trained the military.

In Fiji, I remember going there And I met up with the attache He actually participated this time And we got in the helicopter And we flew out in the millin nowhere In the jungle And we ended up where people were wearing

Fucking robes I mean, you know One cloths and shit Like you know Way back in the day And we ended up in their long house You know drinking cobble Which they think makes it drunk

But it's ridiculous It doesn't make it drunk. I mean, we sit there for hours while they were doing their little ceremony, you know, and we laid the groundwork for the guys from first to come in. Hopefully, I don't know if they did, but we sent back, you know, what they could use and do. So you're right. It was kind of like a recont in the office. Right, right. Like the pilot team. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, one-man pilot team. But anyway, so that was a really good one. I'm going to say a couple more of Seychelles. Now it's really interesting. The Seychelles are like off the coast of Africa more than anywhere else. It's a Pacific island, but it's closer to Africa.

Go ahead. Right. I was just going to say, I mean, alongside major international shipping routes through the sea and occasionally a coup attempt happens there. And we definitely didn't want the Soviets controlling that island chain. That's right. So that was the really interesting one because when I got there at that time, a group commander met me there. That's how serious they were taking this. And so the group commander, I can't say his name, but whatever, me and him were there. And we planned out the mission to follow on. We started playing the mission to follow on about how they're going to manage the Seychelles. I don't know what the follow-up ended up being Jack. That was the problem in my job. I never knew what happened downstream for whatever reason.

But they considered the Seychelles a super important place at that time. And you're right. Geographically, and the Russians were all over the place. And Eric Prince was, I don't think it was there back then. But Eric Prince definitely found a place to hang out there later on. Have you heard anything about anybody going to say shows? As far as like an SFMT or something, no, I don't believe I have. I'd have to dig.

I've heard it in more recent years than the 2000s in the Maldives. Yeah, there you go. So in the 90s, I went to the Maldives. And that was a really interesting place too. And again, another one man, there was, I don't think there was an embassy there. There was some American he met me. There might be a council with there or something. I don't know.

But you've got in the Maldives, you've got to go everywhere by boat. Literally, the airports in Ireland, the capital is an island. The hotel I stayed in was an island. It was really funny. But the thing that sticks out in my mind

that was funny about the Maldives, and it should be geographically important because that's where climate change is going to sink. That's the first country that's going to sink in climate change. Um, to set up the target range, we had to put the targets in a boat and pull them out offshore. And they didn't have the fire at targets and then bring the boat back to see how well they did. Isn't that funny? I mean, marsmanship training would have taken days or weeks because of that.

So they've gone back there now? Uh, you know, in the 2000s, and I'm trying to remember the exact story, but, uh, we had a team, there when there was like a little coup going on and we had to evacuate the team off the island. I want to say it was the Maldives. I interviewed a first group officer about it, but my memory may be a little bit faulty. Yeah, they only had a police force too, but they couldn't have a coup. Who knows? I don't know?

You know, everybody has a coup, don't they? In those policemen. Yeah. Let's see. wants to know. Oh, Indonesia. That's a big one. So I made an initial contact in Indonesia. Now, the defense attach was deeply involved in Indonesia because there was a huge, I forget the name of the programs of the military equipment programs. Like the 1208, 1206 programs. Exactly. They were huge. We were dumping military equipment and money on Indonesia like it was the end of the world. And let me tell you,

something, dude. And I think there's probably some Cag guys and other people that all tested this, too. I think the Indonesian special forces are among the best that I've come across. I really do. And I know they've been trained by Cagg, too, in addition to us. So what happened was the prime minister or president, whatever he was. His son was the head of the special forces. Now, I know it sounds like nepotism, but he was a badass on his own. And their unit, there are copassus they were called. There were badasses of their own accord, though we gave them lots of additional training.

We did not want things to go south in Indonesia because it's a barrier, you know, between China and Australia, I believe. The Australian SAS does their own training missions in Indonesia. And actually, interestingly, they've also taken up a lot of stuff in the Philippines, too. Oh, the Australian SAS? Yeah, one of the guys, I had an exchange guy on my team of first group from, and we're still friends from the Australian SAS.

He became the regimental sergeant major of the SAS. Really good guy, Gary Kingston. What was your experience in Indonesia like? So I got to go there. I want to say eight times probably. What happened was the commander took our liking to me for every reason. And you know how that shit goes. Then he starts asking for me by name, whatever.

And so I kept going over there. And he treated me like I can't. He gave my own little HUD and food made. I mean, it was great, you know. And it helped, you know, me understand their mission more and help me understand how we could help them more, having this relationship. And SOPAC is like, yeah, go back and forth as much as you want. You know?

The one thing, good thing about. sock pack and those socks had basically just started up. I don't even think there were other socks besides sock pack. I think soft pack might have been the first one. I know there was no, I don't think there was any other ones. There might have been,

but I don't think so. But the first commander was General Holland who was became a SOCOM commander, I believe. He was an Air Force pilot. And he was a one star when I was there.

And he loved SF guys. And he was like, you guys do what you want to do, do what you need, spend what you got to spend. And he would go up to, you know, paycom and get the money that we needed to do shit and get the permissions. You know, he was a really, really good commander. So it sounds like the, you know, it would have been the T-Soc for paycom that they were really into you like just going over there and building rapport. Yes, totally. They got it. They totally got it.

That's why I ended up going so many countries. Like for the Cambodia thing, I ended up getting a huge United Nations award for me and for Paycon. For starting those programs. It was a big deal, man. Yeah. Of course, I lost the award somewhere in a box. It was a big deal then, and I remember it, so whatever. But yeah, yeah, he totally was into.

supporting special forces, which was really, really good. So, yeah, that was Indonesia. They continued to build our military. Now I don't know the situation. Have you heard anything about guys going there recently? I haven't heard anything about Americans going there. And I mean, that doesn't mean anything. It certainly could be happening.

And I just, it hasn't popped up on my radar. Yeah, I hope they're going. because those guys are good. Thailand, you know, I went there 10 times or whatever. It's the same old, I mean, Thailand, I don't know what to say about it. It's a good country. It's the same training evolution over and over every year. Exactly.

You need to do it once. You do. It's important to do it once. The first time I did it, it was really interesting. We went up in the mountains and we went to an old American base. that nobody had been to him like 100 years. It was all grown over and shit. And we started scraping away the vines

and we can find in the concrete guy's names from the 60s and no units they were in. It was so cool. Yeah, it was fun to go back and see that, man. But yeah, you got to go one color ago getting on near belt. Tongo was really cool.

Again, we trained up down. I think they had a pseudo-military, like not a real one, but halfway between a police force in the military. I couldn't swear. I remember we set the framework, though, for a real fundamental kind of terrain, and I don't know if that was followed up on. Vanuatu was a lot like Fiji, you know, a longhouse out in the middle of the jungle, sent him down the building report, drinking cob again, or everybody acts like they're fucked up. I'm like, why do you guys acting like you're fucked up? It doesn't do anything

to you. Come on, man. Oh, my God. Oh, Egypt was fine. So we got to train with Telesavod, which is the Egyptian Special Force, it's Triple Seven. And we went over there for a long time. It was a combat dive team,

and we were training them in combat diving. And it was a very long and extensive course. I think I would say by the end of the horse, they were pretty damn proficient or as proficient as you could expect them to be as combat divers. It was funny. We took them to Suez Canal and did one of those rope. That's fucking things are hard, man, climbing up those rope. It's a little some metal ladders up the side of the boat. And I think it was either right before or right after that, that thing happened where that Achillearo.

Yeah, in the Mediterranean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they had been trained in how to do that. Couldn't say if they did or didn't do it. I know they did get in or on a plane take down and pretty much killed everybody from what I remember. Yes, I remember that. That was unfortunate. That could have gone another one.

I can't remember exactly when that takedown was. And I want to say it was like 87 or 88. Again, this is off the top of my head. Yeah, well, we would have already trained them by that. If that's the correct year, we were trained them by that point already. Bosnia, I took a company from 10th grade on their Bosnia rotation. That was interesting. I think that was a very, very good special forces mission to have.

By now you're a sergeant major. Yeah. Company sergeant major. Yeah. Your singleton days are behind you now. they have responsibilities for you. Yeah.

Yeah. And I was kind of bummed because I got to do a lot of shit and a lot of super classified cool shit, you know, and then it's back to the company. But that's okay. It is what it is.

What was Bosnia like then? So Bosnia was interesting. Have you had anybody come on and talk about it? Yeah, yeah, definitely. People, you know, who were free and post-nobes. 9-11, a lot of guys cut their teeth there. Yeah.

So, yeah, they had these houses set up kind of around the compass point, you know, and they had a team per house that was a beautiful setup. You know, you couldn't ask for anything more. And every house on the inside of the house was fortified like fucking Fort Knox. They had heavy weapons in the windows. They had access to rocket launchers. They had everything. they need to have a gunfight, you know? And so they would basically, you know, they were supposed to patrol around and in face with the, with the civilians a little bit, you know. I don't know how the other deployments went. You know, I only know how the deployment I was on. What have other people told you? Because I'm not really clear on. Go ahead.

I mean, some of them have told me, I mean, some of the J-Soc guys were doing like low visibility, you know, reconnaissance stuff driving around. Some of the SF guys, I mean, going around drinking Rockia with the local police and developing rapport with them. I talked to one guy. Who was it? Mark Giaconia, who his team was working with Russian Spetsnas in. 2000 and they went and got into a firefight with the rebels it was like a joint operation they did together yeah bosnia was like i don't think the i think it could have been done better i'm not sure the mission was clear enough for people you know i think this is after actually i'm looking back

you can say anything but i think the mission could have been clearer for people i think they could have been better prepared with more knowledge than even I didn't get, like, or my company commander. I think they could have passed on more knowledge to us about what exactly the mission was. Right, right. And what exactly we were supposed to do there or not do? What was your impression of the mission once, well, when you got there? Well, like you said, driving around drinking booze, I had a guy get a DUI, you know, fuck.

driving around drinking booze and building rapport. I mean, that's basically what they're doing. You know, I think that, I think their actual missions should have been cleared and just drive around building rapport. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't, I don't blame them one bit. I don't blame a single guy on the ground. It's the chain of command above.

I do not think in this particular instance provided enough clear guidance that people, people could understand how serious this was. I think Bosnia was far more serious than the guys I took anyway, realized. And therefore, because I was not a 10th group guy, I just got there and we got the mission. So I didn't have any history with 10th group. I didn't know shit about Bosnia. So I knew what they told me.

I knew what people told me, you know, and I knew what the mission stated. and that was what I knew, you know. And you guys got in a, there were a couple dustups on that deployment, wasn't there? Yeah. One guy. Yeah. There was a couple dustups. Yeah.

The only casual I know is one bad guy. There should have been a lot more. What happened there? In the, what the casualty? That was a guy in a restaurant. it was legit you know getting threatened so he kept gone like it was that's the story i was told jack this is not first-hand information i get i'm going to say i don't know what happened except somebody got captive yeah that's what i know but you as a sergeant major you had to go

and deal with the aftermath well the worst aftermath was No, they had Pete Moosey, Sarmajor, I believe. He was a buddy of mine. He fought in El Salvador, Pete did. Me and Pete were peers. Pete's a hell of gone. He was a sergeantor, too. We got out the same day.

Both sergeantors, both said, hey, that's good. There was, I remember you telling me a story about how you had like a dust up with the Russians over there. I did have a dust up with the Russians. So they wanted me to go over to. the Russians and tell them, this is when Kosovo happens and somehow tell them not to go to Kosovo. And it's like, okay. And so I think that both the conventional people, which was M&D North, first cab, and us were both trying to convince the Russians not to go to Kosovo, but of course, that's ridiculous.

I went up to the gate and they're like, no, you're not coming. Oh, sorry, I didn't need to touch me. Now I can't see you. I'm here. Okay. No, you're not coming in. And then I want to say, it was shortly before or shortly be after that, that one of our houses got hit pretty hard. They hit it with rockets, machine guns, small arms, fire, et cetera, et cetera.

So it got hit pretty hard. And I want to, I'm thinking it's like right around the same. same time. Again, I wish I kept track, but I didn't. Because it is important to know if it was related or not. I don't know if the incidents of us trying to convince the Russians not to go to Kosovo and them being fuck you and what happened to our house or I couldn't tell you. I mean, I don't believe in coincidences myself, but it could have been the timing was different. And then what they did? So they came at the house hard. When they did push into Kosovo, that turned into a shitstorm with you as well, didn't it?

What do you mean? I'm just trying to remember some of the previous conversations we had. I remember, didn't they, you were at a bridge trying to. Oh, yeah, yeah. We were trying to stop the Russians like standard. Like, you're not going to go. You're not going to go. And they're like, we're going.

I'm like, fine. But this is one of the important part I'm trying to think of is just a, almost the exact same time the house got shot up. You know, that's why I think they might have been connected. Yeah. You know, I'm out here and just fucking making shit up. I don't know. But I'm sure there's somebody who can, many people who can correct me, probably hundreds.

But that's my recollection is they were very close to each other, you know. And the amount of firepower they put on that house, they weren't intending to say hi and just keep going. They wanted to kill some fucking people, you know. So. There's a couple other things I think we need to hit up before moving on to. So first, you mentioned the Gulf War. Mm-hmm.

How do you get involved in that one? So in the Gulf War, and this will go back to you ask me how I got to my next, step. I was on the special project team and my team sergeant had one idea about what going into combat meant. And I had a different idea. So I took my idea to my sergeant major and he let me go. I went out to the field to help a company with Syrians, some Syrian guys because I spoke Arabic. So I went out there to help him with some Syrians. Syrian guys and I stayed out there for a while helping them with the Syrians and boy they were fucking assholes. Holy shit. Wow. They were serious fucking assholes. Ultimately, they ended up surrounding our, first of all, the B team and everybody else left, the B team was actually out there and everybody left.

And my team and maybe one other team or two was still out there. And the fucking serenings surrounded us with these goddamn armored vehicles and ship. They're like, get the fuck out of here. I'm like, okay, we're gone. So we packed up and left. So then what happened? We might have got an en route, an en route changeover to the mission, but it happened pretty quick.

and we ended up with the Egyptians again. Tell it Sabat, huh? But we ended up with Egyptians, who I'd worked for, obviously, with obviously in the past. Wasn't the same unit, but it was the Egyptians. And somewhere in the period in between, the Sergeant Major gave me one's team. So I ended up being a team sergeant,

which I was, of course, thrilled about the team wasn't, but I was. You know, it's so funny, I'll just tell you this as an aside. When I took over that team, I think there were six, seven, I was, by the end of the fucking war, there were 14 fucking people on my team. You know what I'm, oh my God, I was so mad. You know, here all of these motherfuckers come out. Where were you when I was doing all the sheer work?

Oh, but, you know, really. I mean. They want to get in on the war. Yeah, it was fucking bullshit, man. I didn't like it at all. I mean, you got your team, you train together, you get ready. And here they throw a bunch of, you know, off, that want to check a box and other guys that mostly I think it was like an officer

and at least one two warring officers and more enlisted guys from third boot maybe or something I don't know I just ignore all of them I just want to take a moment to point out like what you guys were doing there at that time because as I recall during the Gulf War and I'm sorry I can't remember the exact program name but there's like a military liaison program where we put SF liaisons with each member of the coalition that HW had put together. That's what

we did. That's exactly right. And we were the only reason they made it to Kuwait City. Because we had the first seriously, we had the first GPS ever to come out. We would have never found the motherfucker. So you ended up doing the invasion with the

Egyptians? I rode on top of the commanding general's tank from the trenches to the burning trenches to the Melanchade City because I wouldn't get inside that motherfucker because I didn't want to die inside a burning fucking

tank so I sat on top with my M16. I did and I helped them navigate and we get off now and then and do shit, you know? I'll tell you man, we saw and this will come around to cancer later. We came across

decontamination sites, we came across stored chemical weapons, we came across what had we been spills of chemical weapons. We had so much chemical weapon exposure. And then on top of it at the end, have you heard of Kismaya? Kusmaya is a place where the conventional guys had gathered up a lot ton of weapons, having no idea what they were, conventional engineers, and bloom all of it once. And there was this humongous bloom of smoke that settled back down.

over the AOR. And virtually almost every, and the CIA went back and did, for the government, did an AAR. And every single team from fifth group that was deployed got hit by that plume of fucking smoke. And dude, I don't care. I bought this battle with the VA for 10 years because I have terminal cancer. it's gone on and off for 10 years but it's I don't have maybe less than you ever left now

and I lost my turn of thought I'm sorry the plume of smoke coming down on all the teams on all teams and there's a Facebook group now for soft cancer guys funny how many guys are in that fucking plume now I had to fight the VA for over a year about

disability for my cancer ultimately after getting to the BA Administrative Court in D.C. with a Navy colonel who jagg officer who did it for free for me. We brought in

like crates of fucking boxes set them down and we're like, we're not leaving. So they ultimately gave it to me 100% for the chemical, for the disability for bone cancer, but they wouldn't say

it was all right. They said it was exposure to some shit in Africa. I'm like, really? Yeah, it's ridiculous. Because it would open a huge can of worms for them. Yeah, well, I mean, it's unfortunate our government

plays this game. You know, they did it with Agent Orange. Then they did it with, you know, Gulf War Syndrome, which that probably is what you're describing. That guys were exposed to low level UXO that was destroyed. And it affects some people, more than other.

There's, I'm always saying this. People were closer than others. Yeah, yeah. There is an actual study that came out last year. And they showed that like there are certain types of people. Their DNA, like, and it's in their genetics, their receptor to sarin gas is higher than some other people. And that explains why there may be this disparity, why some soldiers got quote unquote

Gulf War syndrome and others didn't. That's wild. I never heard of that. Yeah, yeah. There, there is some like actual. some legit medical research on that now. And I'm sure I'm not explaining it as a doctor would, but I mean,

that's the gist of it. No, I get it. But my opinion is at the end of the day, they don't want to say that it was due to chemical weapons exposure in the Gulf War, because it's going to open this huge can of worms for all these guys to make claims. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Which fucking sucks. It's bullshit, honestly. It's total bullshit. And, you know, I went to fifth group, friends of mine have gone to fifth group, you know, also our majors. And we've tried to talk to them, but we don't get the impression fifth group's important this at all, you know, trying to open up an actual investigation into what happened.

There's so many guys out there who probably don't even know why they had cancer. It doesn't even occur to them that it could have been chemical weapons, you know. I mean, really, I was. so furious when they when they said africa come on man what chemical weapons were there in africa give me a break but the other thing i wanted to swing back on was your time on the greenlight team yeah yeah that was so fun i had the best time so all right i'm going to try to explain this without offending anybody, but something that offends me is the distinction between pre-post 9-11 veterans. I'm not blaming anyone for doing this, but I'll tell you, I know an awful lot of pre-9-11 veterans

like, let's say, MacB. Saug, you know, I don't know why they made that distinction, do you? Because we're missing a lot of benefits. I don't. It goes by error. So there's like Vietnam era, there's Gulf War era. And you may fall into that cohort but not have served in the war. I honestly don't understand that shit either. Well, all I know is I'm trying to get scholarships for my kids to go to college. And seriously, at least half of them, you have to be a post-9-11 veteran. No clue.

Why would you make that distinction? What does it matter when you served? You know? What difference does it make? Anyway, I'll let that slide. So Greenlight. I did Greenlight for, I think, three years. Greenlight is infiltrating a nuclear weapon that fits in a rucksack into a target area

and then placing it on a strategic target in the event of a very large, well, it's going to be on the event of a World War, was what it was brought into service for, was for the Cold War to stop the Soviets from coming across and apparently it's still classified some officer told me I'd talk about a couple weeks ago

but we were supposed to block key strategic points like dams cuts and the mountain passes stuff like that stuff that could stop tanks. Bridges, ports. Bridges, big bridges.

You know, And you could implant them. You could go in and dive and use the combat dive team to put them on a bridge or a dam. It was definitely a lot of dam targets. When you could halo it in, you could stagling, parachute it in, you get walking in. The big problem, and I'll talk more about it, and you can ask me questions. The big problem from the team, though, is depending on how long your appointment is, the operator, meaning the guy

There's one guy who says He's the guy who knows how to work the weapon He has to carry He carries the weapon most of the time Although you're supposed to rotate it I'm here to tell you Jack There's a lot of guys that can't carry it I mean just can't carry it

It's just too heavy for him And you try to weed them out But if we ever got a real world mission We're weeded them out Because if you can't carry it What good are you? Because you have to distribute all your shit, your food and your clothes and your mess and among all the other guys on the team.

And it was usually a split team. So that's a lot of weight for everybody, Kerry, you know, and so it makes it hard. So anyway, maybe you can get a picture of one to put up with this thing. Yeah, for sure. I have, I can keep going. I can actually do a share screen thing. Okay. Okay. So the first thing you had to do was go to this school up at Port Belbar.

And ironically enough, it says special forces special atomic demolition munition training course. I think I sent you a copy of mine, a poem if you haven't. And it's a conventional trend. There it does that. It looks like it's in a museum. Yeah, that's a, I believe there's a National Atomic Museum in Nevada. Yeah, so they make a specialized container. That's not it. It's a hard and foam container that you put the weapon in. So when you drop your rucksack, it's cushioned.

Here is, I got this one from a seal who is part of the program. Yeah, that's it. That's not in a rucksack, obviously. Maybe they swim it. Yeah, they did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And let me see what else I might have for you. I have a couple pictures of the jump pack.

Oh, but here's a good, this is like probably an iconic photo, you could say. Let's see. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good picture. Some dude Hey, oh, man. Yeah, that's a real good picture. It's really weird. He doesn't have any of a rucksack either. It's on a different, it's a jump pack, you know.

Hmm. They must not have been planning to move it anywhere. That's weird. Anyway, so you went through the training, and when you got through the training, if you made it, if you made it, it was complicated because there was a ton of math. You had to calculate all this crap about where the blast is going to go and where the wind's going to go. it's a big weapon and the effect is really far because of the fallout. It's crazy. Especially depending on the wind.

So you get through the training, you go back to your team. And from then on, you're basically your dedicated greenlight team. You don't do anything else. You do greenlight practices and greenlight training. You basically just practice a bunch of missions, but you incorporate a dummy. a dummy weapon in your missions. So you can, you do DA missions over and over again incorporating the dummy weapon in a rock sack.

In addition to that, somebody, you know, if I say that a department, it would be the wrong department. You would think the Department of Nuclear, Department of Energy, I think it was, DOE, would come down and do periodic inspections. I think they were annual. And that was for the whole company down to the team. Everybody had to pass the inspections. And let me tell you, everybody did not pass the inspections.

You couldn't, you were non-functional until you could pass the inspection. So that goes from all the paperwork and ship, the battalion company got to do, which you can imagine with a nuclear weapon is a lot, down to the team and all the safety stuff and all the operational stuff. You have to learn how to do. And everybody on the team, just like everybody else, has to know how to do everything. It's, um, as I've researched this topic, I mean, one of the like mysteries is around these exercises, there's always these like civilians floating around.

So guys, a guy wearing a suit shows up in a briefing or, um, you have some guys wearing military fatigues out on a training exercise, but they're, they have long hair, no military. bearing. They're clearly not soldiers. In another case, guys in literal sterilized black jumpsuits who don't identify themselves. So it's a bit of a mystery sometimes who these, you know, literal MIBs in some cases are. And I suspect that they came from the defense nuclear agency. Oh, yeah, yeah. In 1997, merged with another agency and became the defense threat reduction agency or DTR. Yeah, no, I'm sure. Which exists. Which exists. Which exists. to this day. And so I can't, I can't say I know for a fact that all of those civilians were

with that organization. Some of them were from Sandia Labs or Lawrence Livermore. But I think, I think the bulk of them were from the defense nuclear agency. All right. So I'll tell you my, and I prompt me, I've told you these, my exposure to civilians and weird events that happened to me when I was on green light. So, like you said, when you do the inspection, the MIBs were always there. You never knew who the fuck they were. They would tell you who they were, like, whatever. You know, they were always at the inspections.

So you asked me what weird things happened to me during green light. So let me think of them in order. So the first one I can think of is one time at Bracken's. Now, this is really where we're at Fort Bragg, and they called us out to do a greenlight mission, and we mouth to poke broad daylight, and they had a bunch of MPs surrounding the back of the plane, and the vehicle backed up to the back of the plane, and we had a bunch of guys watching us go through the arming of the weapon, you know? And it was weird to have all those guys there. And then we went out to, and we just went out and jumped at Sicily. It was really weird. And there were civilians on the ground at Sicily.

Sicily drop zone for the listeners at Fort Bragg. Right. Right in the middle of Fort Bragg. So we'll just assume it must have been a dummy because nobody's going to drop a nuclear weapon at Fort Bragg. I mean, come on. I mean, right? Well.

Some of us would like to drop a nuclear weapon on Fort Bragg. Like nobody's going to fall off a Fulton skyhook in the fucking housing area at Fort Bragg. You know that story? No. Yeah, they picked up a guy and when they were testing the Fulton Sky Hook and he fell off right in the middle of the housing area, Prague. Oh, I've heard the story about how he became so disoriented. He fell off the back ramp. But I didn't know that was over the housing area.

Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit. Isn't that funny? So, you know, that was whatever it was. The next one that was weird,

was in Utah, double-proving grounds where there's so many chemicals and so much, all the chemical testing and shit goes on out there and radiation testing, I believe a whole ton of it's not out there too.

So we had a little mission where we, we jumped in. We were carrying the weapon. And we took it in our company commander was with us. And some other people were with us

that I'm not, I don't know who they were. And we were supposed to detonate it in a cave at Doeway. So we took the weapon in there. We infiltrated. We went to the cave. We put it in the cave. We put it in the cave and we detonated the weapon. That's all I can tell you, except for the funniest part,

which was my company commander without the, without the nuclear pit. It was the conventional explosives. Right. Correct. God willing. The funniest part was my company commander who I despise left a fucking radio in the cave. So I was so happy. And I hope he hears this because he knows. knows I despised him. Was he relieved after that? You know, he wasn't. And I don't know why. Probably because, you know, you know why.

They keep shit to themselves. Yeah. So the third one is kind of more interesting. So we got like a warning order. I don't want to say it, right? And so packed up, packed up boxes, packed up everything, you know, like you do on a rollout. And we packed everything up and we flew to Morocco. And in Morocco, we did isolation for a couple weeks, you know, for a green light mission.

And it was very serious. The whole thing was very serious. And we were given everything that we wanted, needed to ask for, which you know how weird that is, to get everything. you want and get everything you asked for. So we knew something was going on. We didn't know what. So then we got onto a C-1, after we passed the out-brief by the group commander, what do they call those, debrief, isolation?

I can't remember, isolation debrief. Like a back brief. Back-brief, okay. So after we got the blessing to go on the mission, we loaded up and got picked up by an MC-130. in Morocco. We had a new team sergeant who we didn't really know. And on the trip over to the UK from Morocco, the MC 130 ran into a lot of turbulence. And it was a very rough flight. And then it lost an engine. Then it lost another engine. I can't remember if it lost a third, but for sure it lost two, 100%. And our new team sergeant,

was laying on the floor having some issues. So we landed in the UK. The MC 130 was deadlined, but we already had another one there. Wait, that's weird. So we got on the other one. It was the middle of the night, backed up to all we could see was a million MPs around us.

And they loaded. Do you recall what airfield this was in the UK? I wouldn't have known. They didn't tell them. yeah I want to say it didn't seem like it was that long between we finished crossing the channel

and landed so whatever's in southern England there was probably it and it was probably where they stored weapons there in England I don't know so yeah

so we picked up the weapon and somebody watched this arm it and I don't know who it was well a few people watch this and so then they closed it up and we flew into our drop zone we parachuted into a blind LZ at night which is sketchy as it always can be right but everybody made the landing okay and then we had a long movement to to the target area so we made a really long movement and for some raising the team leader was navigating and he managed to make us have to cross the

Audubon with a fucking nuke at night. I was just like you gotta fucking be kidding me. Are you serious? Hey, I lost. So we crossed the Audubon with a goddamn Saddam device. I was scared to death. That's the most scared I've ever been in my whole career trying to run. across the Audubon with every rock sack man.

You know how those things are. I mean, have you seen them? Yeah, yeah. And Hans is driving down the Autobahn at 150 kilometers. Exactly. Like 150 miles an hour. You know, they're crazy over there. So, yeah, we managed to get across the Autobahn.

We got the weapon to the target. And some guys met us there, and they took the web. And then, well, after we had and placed it on the target and overwatch it for, so with with sadoms, you're supposed to arm the device and you're supposed to stay within visual distance of the device until it detonates. Do that math. It doesn't work out. It doesn't work. No. But on my life, you can find it in writing on positive.

you're supposed to keep visual contact with the satem until it detonates. So why don't you tell him the Don Alexander story, then he told you? Oh, he told me that back in the day, your favorite joke was that when you unlocked the satem and opened up the lid that there'd be 12 medals of honor and a bottle of Jack Daniels inside. Yep, we knew. We knew the deal. But we did it.

You know, what are you going to do? You do your mission. Besides that, my personal opinion was there was no timer. I felt like the second you turned that button that was going to go off. That was my opinion. I have no proof whatsoever. But why did you put a 12-minute timer on it or whatever? Why would you do take any additional risk?

You're going to kill the guys anyway. They're going to be dead. They know that. it's really interesting i think that even with a nuclear weapon and you have all this doctrine and security and regulation and stuff that some of it just didn't make sense and so these these team sergeants largely who are vietnam veterans you know they know how to run a patrol so like for instance the the tactic that only two guys on the team are supposed to have the combination to the device to open it up one of them has half of the combination the other has the other half

but any guy I don't remember that but go ahead well either way any any crusty team sergeant who's been in a lot of combat operations

knows that you have to have contingencies and everyone on the mission has to know how to do the mission because what if that one guy with that information comes up at trees or everybody

knew yeah everybody on my team yeah 100% yeah so it's just it's interesting how the team start like coloring outside the lines out of operational necessity because the doctrine just doesn't it doesn't make sense yeah yeah that's why i thought there was no time why what's the point you know yeah a lot of guys felt that way

and would joke about it yeah yeah yeah i mean there's no there's no proof that that's true but i mean it was a fairly common belief on some of these teams well all it does is add additional risk to the mission right that it adds additional possibility that somebody gets controlled with Right. So either way, you're dead. So whatever. I mean, if I can see the weapon, it's going to kill me. Yeah, in the extraction, the extraction plans were pretty gonzo if they existed.

Oh, they were awesome, man. We were going to E&E like 1,000 clicks and hit these cachet points along the way. No problem, dude. No, seriously, the EM&E plans were very detailed. I think they were left from World War II. Pretty sure. Pretty sure. But they gave them to us.

We had them. I never saw one that wasn't like a ground evasion plan. So jumping around a little bit again. Sure. After your assignment in Company Sergeant Major with 10th group to Bosnia, what came after that? I was compelled to medically retired because I, couldn't jump anymore. I had 11 surgeries to my right knee. I could barely run. I couldn't jump. I knew I could bullshit more for some years, but I wouldn't do it. What's the point? If I can't do

what everybody else is doing, I'm not going to fake it until I make it fuck that. I'm going to put somebody else in danger. If I say, yeah, I can rock, run, and I can't. Right? So I took the medical retirement. How did retirement treat you? Good. Yeah. So I had been finishing my bachelor's degree by taking online classes and shit, blah, blah, blah, blah, the years like all of the students.

And then when I was waiting for my medical retirement paper, which literally took a year, no shit, they let me go. college. So I was getting my master's degree. By the time I got out and said a little well later, I ended up with my master's. And then I went to work for some technology companies. It was a great second career. I think I spent 17 years in a second career, which was really successful. I had a really good time. I got to keep working for the government. I got to have a way hire security clearance than I've ever had before. And I got to do a lot of cool shit.

Unfortunately, it's all still classified. I can't talk about it, but it was good. It was good. And then I'm going to be honest to you and everybody out there, because it's hard to say this. As my knees got worse, I got addicted to Oxy and it fucking took me down. To you guys out there, I know that a lot of people are in the same. exact position that I was where you're injured and they'll give you oxy or whatever if you ask for it. And if you ask for more, they'll give you more. You've got to not do that, man.

It'll eat your life up. Drugs and alcohol will eat your life up. Don't do it. Get help if you need it. Talk to your buddies. If you need to, do what you've got to do to stay healthy to get better. Tons of guys got to have PTSD right now. Shit tons. Ask for help. Don't let it eat you up. Don't drink till you go unconsciously.

You know, it's not going to work. You're just going to die from it. So I want everybody to take that away. And a really good friend of mine who was a three-star. Have you heard General Friedovich? Dave Friedovich? The name rings a bell somewhere. He was the first.

guy mostly. I met, I knew him from Sock. He became deputy commander of use of sock. And one day, when it was getting close to his retirement, he gave a speech and he said what I just said. Oxy for his back. It was destroying his life and his family. Yeah. It's a serious subject and you got to take care of it.

And it's extremely addictive of what I understand. Any kind of opiates are very, addicted. It's horrible. And a lot of our, as you point out, Michael, I mean, a lot of our soldiers who have been injured during the war, that's how it starts, right? And it's very easy for the, you know, those guys to get addicted. And it's not because they're bad or because they're weak or something like that. No, not at all. Yeah. It takes strength to get the help you need. You're not being a pussy. You're being a strong man, you know, to get the help you need. Um, so that's that. The other thing I'd like to talk a little bit about is there's a Facebook group called Soft Cancer Warriors or something like that.

I'll get you the link later and you can first it. And it's guys that have cancer too early from Special Fortress guys. I think there's 500 members or something right now. If you have cancer, you need to find this Facebook group and get everything. They've got everything about what's going on currently as far as the military side of the house. house, the treatment side of the house, the historical side of the house, we're trying to get the regimen to get involved in this because there's a lot of guys that are dying of cancer and have already died of cancer when they shouldn't have way too young. Dude, I was 47 when I was

diagnosed and told I was going to die in five years. Didn't. Then I was told I was going to nine three. And two years ago, I thought I was going to die in wine. So, you know. If it's okay with you, Mike, can you tell us a little bit about like what type of cancer you got hit with, what you think that may have come from, you know, what the treatment has been like? Sure. So I started off with prostate cancer, which I found out so late that they had to immediately yank that thing out. I went to, first I went to Sloan Kettering, which is not. known for a huge cancer center, a global leading cancer center.

And they did the initial treatment. And then it came back. And dude, I didn't even know it could come back. I thought when they took that thing out, I was done. Well, a few years later, that shit came back. And it was just during a routine prostate annual physical that I found out. And I said to my doc, I'm like, what do you mean? I had my prostate out.

And that's when he told me. Well, I went out in Park, Ilan. And I called the American Cancer Society. And I'm like, is this for real? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, God damn. So I ended up, this time I have to try care because I'm retired. I ended up at Yale.

And lucky enough to end up the guy who became ultimately the number one prostate cancer doctor in the world. And he started treating me. And he put me on every clinical trial that came along, every treatment, I have radiation, I've had injections, I've had chemotherapy, I've had so many different types of treatment. But each one has given me a few more years of life. You know, I'm on chemo right now for the third time, but it's not going great. but they've already got something else in the pipeline.

You know, they're going to give to me. And for the last five years, I've been at the VA because I like it there. You know, they give me a team of people that helps me. They're connected to Yale. They do really good. But the guys in the group have all different types of cancer and know about all the different kinds of treatment. So it's a huge resource until we can convince the damn regiment to do something, which we need to do.

You know, these, I 100% think it's from chemical or nuclear weapons, ionizing radiation, not like a, not like a nuke, which are in weapons. And because I saw it was exposed to so many chemical weapons and decon points in Iraq, I can't imagine it's not from that. I know it ain't from some goddamn locust in Africa. so now it's bone cancer and that's just horrible it's so painful it's in my fucking spine and my ribs and my back it sucks but prostate cancer you can go to bone cancer or it cannot yeah yeah yeah man um but you know i've wanted to live with it i just want to tell my story

get guys to get help uh not just with cancer but with the drug example and I want guys to help me get the active duty guys to pay attention to us because they're going to be in our case. You know, they're going to inherit whatever we do or don't have. All we got now is one little fucking Facebook move. Come on, guys, you can do better. They can do better than that. It's something that I'm going to get on this year actually is going, I've been putting it off and everyone always tells me you need to go to VA and put this claim in and that claim in. I just been avoiding it.

And thankfully, I've been helpful so far. But having conversations with you, Mike, and with others, I mean, dude, I was exposed to burn pits. You know, I come down with some weird cancer next year that no one's ever seen before. All these guys that were in GY, they need to pay attention, you know, and all these guys that are colonels and generals now need to pay attention to because they're going to get it too. They had long-assed appointments over there, you know?

And I'm sure Iraq still had chemical weapons laying around when they went back in there. Because I saw tons of them myself. They must still have them, right? When they went back. Have you heard? I don't know. I'm sure there's still UXO out there.

Oh, sure. There's tons of UXO. Um, any other questions I failed to ask or any other like events that you really wanted to talk about? No, I don't think so, Jack. I just appreciate your let me have this platform. And, you know, if I help one guy, I've done my job.

And right. And if I get that link, can you somehow embedded. Yes, I can. I can put it in the description. Okay, perfect. So my motto is New Dapion for real, not, not for the SIF. Because I've been to fine cancer for so fucking long. you know it's true man yeah yeah oh and you know i still get uh notes of support and text

familiar he's a good man that's awesome about the answer yeah yeah all the good people in us up hey well i uh you know i hope that you're going to stick around for a little while longer mike and i hope i hope i hope we can meet up uh up uh in your neck of the woods we both live in the northeast uh hope i can see you again you know sometime this year All right, Jack. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thank you, Mike.